democracy has been confronted with the ancient distinctions of class which have yielded slowly before the demands of the less favored classes and yet have yielded in important respects. In the United States democracy has faced the inherited question of race division in the south, has seen an extraordinary intensification of power of corporate wealth against which the laboring classes have contended with varying success, and in the third place has blundered almost unthinkingly into a new problem of empire. Fortunately the economic profits in the Philippines have not been so dazzling as to blind the people to the seriousness of abandoning lightly the standard of self government, and despite the frenzy of a few the American people as a whole has not been disposed to follow the invitation of those who urge us to "pluck the ripe apple" which hangs at our southern border. The race problem has perhaps seen less advance toward solution, yet the great leader of the Negro people who recently died felt far from discouraged at the results of his labors toward giving the Negro economic standing and self-respect. The economic problem has occupied the greatest share of attention. So long as we have in America political equality with economic and educational inequality, so long as we have self-government in politics and autocracy in industry, we shall doubtless be in unstable equilibrium. And for America no less than for Europe the war brings its problems to democracy. In the midst of arms not only are laws silent but the individual everywhere must bow to authority. On the other hand efficient national organization tolerates no neglect of any member of the community. With such opposing forces democracy must view with anxiety the decision of the tremendous contest now waging. The conditions of peace may easily make possible the advance of genuine democracy or they may set back progress for decades.
The conceptions of family life and the ethics of the sexes have undergone important criticism. The dramas of Ibsen and Strindberg and Brieux, the essays of Ellen Key, the activity of the Bund für Mutterschutz, reflect continental European aspects of this problem. The increase of divorce and the contest for suffrage are American phases. In both we recognize a greater
